Director of Water Investments Group in West Palm Beach

All of us have likely experience poverty in one form or another. It’s not just a matter of having enough to eat, clothes to wear and a roof over our heads. For many of us even if we have all those things and much more we often feel we don’t have enough. Hollowness sits inside us and we continually look to fill that space. This is something noted in Buddhism as ‘poverty mentality’ which stems from a feeling of insecurity.

People use different forms to fill the internal hole: drugs, food, religion, philosophy, politics, busyness or friends. While many of these pursuits can be noble in and of themselves, if they are being used as a distraction to who we are then they are a hindrance to our solving our underlying state of poverty.

Notwithstanding true poverty where one is destitute, the state of feeling inferior or less than is something we all feel at some point in our life no matter how educated we are, how much money we have or how many friends surround us.

If internally you live in poverty it is up to you to change your state of being. Every experience, every interaction can be rich, even the ones full of pain. Life is not meant to be pain-free, but it does promise to be rich in experience.

SIX girls cramped into a small bathroom. I don’t mean a normal bathroom. I mean a room where there is one toilet and one sink. We are all gathered around the mirror trying to put on the final touches of our glittery make up. The other girls are go-go dancers. I am an aerialist who performs 30 feet off the ground so for me the glitter is less of an issue, as no one can really see my face anyway. My concern is more with being able to stretch and warm up my muscles so I can climb and do the tricks I was brought here to do. The floor is dirty. The room is tiny. There is an adjoining room I can use. Its 10×10 which is actually twice the size of the one we are all stuffed into. We can use this room, but there is no mirror and there are boxes and loose boards all scattered about the room. That’s not even the part that is an issue. The real issue is It must be connected to a freezer, as the temp is about 50 degrees and anyone who knows about the human body, knows you cannot warm your muscles up for a physical performance in a room so cold. I wait until the go-go dancers go out to do their set and then I carefully lay my rubber mat for stretching out on the floor of the bathroom we were all crammed into. Only this time its just me in there, but even at that I still have to place the mat very precisely so that when I stretch, my head doesn’t end up knocking against the toilet or against the pipes below the sink. I stretch for a few minutes, but then the dancers come back and want to huddle in to check their make-up before their next set. I move my stuff into the adjoining meat locker like room and pile on my sweats and a coat and continue to warm up as much as I can with the restriction of bulky clothing. At least the handstands I do get the blood flowing and I notice the cold less.

The nightclub manager comes to get me “its show time Tina, are you ready? I nod yes. I take off my coat and sweats, take one last drink of water. Then as I leave my meat locker dressing room I realize how much I love that room, as it means I’m getting ready to perform aerial acrobatics over 600 people’s heads in the hottest nightclub in Miami. I would stretch in a garbage dump if it meant a chance to perform my passion, aerial acrobatics!

Tina Reine is currently interested in the nexus between water and energy, as well as a potential water rights and water quality trading markets. She is also interested of the impact of water use on other economic levers such as energy and carbon emissions. Some of the current water initiatives that Tina Reine is involved in include:

• Building a water quality trading system in FL

• Creating water derivatives for an entity that owns significant amounts of the physical

• Developing groundwater banking opportunities for water brokerage

Tina Reine attended Columbia Business School in New York City, where she received a Master of Business Administration in Marketing and Finance. Over a four-year period, she facilitated three companies’ establishment in the sale of verified emission reduction and certified emission reduction units (VERs and CERs, respectively). At CantorCO2e/Blue Source, she located projects and completed offset deals with ClimateCare, The Carbon Neutral Co., B.A.A., and other organizations. At JPMorgan Chase & Co., she established a carbon trading desk and educated others in the company as the Vice President of Voluntary Carbon Market Sales. At NextEra Energy, where she spent two and one-half years as the Manager of Carbon Markets, she traded CERs and VERs, developed a carbon product worth $10 million, spoke at conferences, and handled verification and validation of VERs. Tina Reine left the carbon business in 2011 to establish Curious Properties for buying, renovating, and reselling foreclosures. Tina Reine began pursuing acrobatics during her career as a carbon trader. She has taken to aerial acrobatics as a stress reliever and exercise vehicle in recent years. Involving frequent inversion, the sport reduces blood pressure, increases circulation, and moves lymphatic fluid through the body. Before starting aerial acrobatics, Tina Reine struggled with stress and insomnia, but she has since found the activity to be an excellent substitute for antacids and sleep aids.

Alongside her commercial goals, Tina Reine demonstrates a focus on public activism through regular volunteer activities. She is an advocate against cyber harassment and cyber stalking/bullying.

Tina Reine, currently the principal owner at Curious Properties, a South Florida property investor, and in parallel is involved in developing a water trading market in Florida. Ms Reine has held several management positions navigating the carbon voluntary market. Tina Reine served as Voluntary Carbon Market Sales Vice President at JPMorgan for one year in 2008. She next held a position as Carbon Markets Manager at NextEra Energy prior to focusing her efforts on Curious Properties.

Other experience in Tina Reine’s professional past includes operating Tina’s Gem, a jewelry export company based in New York City. While running the business, she acquired designer jewelry from a variety of sources and maintained a network of boutique retailers in Tokyo, Japan. Tina Reine attended Columbia Business School in New York City, where she received a Master of Business Administration in Marketing and Finance.

Alongside her commercial goals, Tina Reine demonstrates a focus on public activism through regular volunteer activities. She presently engages in frequent involvement with Kristi House, a nonprofit organization in Miami dedicated to eradicating sex trafficking. She also contributes time and resources to Palm Beach Coalition for their projects assisting victims of sex trafficking.